Tag Archive: Nuit Blanche Ottawa Gatineau

As you can see, the Pillars of Light are well on their way to being finished! We’ve been in production for a couple of weeks now and we’re happy to say that we’re well on target to get everything finished right on schedule!

We’re in the home stretch now, with just a little more than a week to go before we can share Pillars of Light with you at Nuit Blanche Ottawa Gatineau, and we’re getting more and more excited with every passing day! We can hardly wait to see you!

One of the best things about participating in an event like Nuit Blanche Ottawa Gatineau is being part of such an amazingly gifted group of artists. We were blown away by the awesomeness of last year’s work, and we’re really looking forward to seeing what everybody has come up with this year!

Looking over the program for this year’s event we’ve found a few pieces that we’re quite excited about and we thought we’d take a moment to share our picks with you. We definitely think all of these are particularly worth checking out!

Britta Evans-Fenton’s Bright Smiles was one of our favorite installations from last year’s event, so we’re really excited about her presentation for 2013. 99 Red Beacons is a roaming display that blends interactive commentary, communications theory, and 80′s nostalgia with 99 blinking red balloons. Now really, how cool is that, right? We’re kind of disappointed that we won’t have the chance to walk around with one of the balloons ourselves, but we hope that some of the roamers will stop by our installation to say hello!

We’re pretty exited about A. Megan Turnbull’s Cylotrope Circus event at Arts Court. We like the idea of looking to the past to make something cool for the future, and we’re really looking forward to seeing what they’ve come up with!

At the end of the day, it all looks very easy. You see a finished installation and it looks awesome and you marvel at how great it is, but very rarely does it come to mind how long it takes on the back end to get everything ready. We can assure you that it takes lots of time. Like, really, lots and lots of time.

We started putting everything together on the weekend, and even though we had planned everything out in intricate detail (on napkins), even though we spent a few hours at the hardware store finding the right tools, even though we were pretty much ready for anything, it still took a long time putting it all together. And we still have a long way to go, but it will all be worth it when we can finally share Pillars of Light with you.

With every installation that SubZeroArts does, we try to build in a learning component for the sake of development. Whether it’s developing new programming, or trying to figure out new problems, or working in different environments, we always try to build on our knowledge base and increase our experience. Admittedly that kind of thinking can lead to it’s share of challenges, but we like to think that it makes us better artists and keeps us sharp. And really, how much fun would it be if there weren’t any challenges?

We’re learning a lot about acrylic and a related material you may already be familiar with, glue. You would think that there isn’t much to know about acrylic, but you would be wrong. There is a considerable knowledge base that one needs when working in this medium. And don’t get us started on glue. There should be a masterclass on that stuff…

Whenever we do a new installation we’re always very lucky to have an interested audience who want to help us out. We’ve always thought that it was a very pleasant side effect of making interactive art, and we’re really grateful that you’d like to participate in our work this way!

With that in mind, a few of you have asked how you can help out with Pillars of Light, so we’ve put together a few suggestions about how you can help us out;

2)Make a donation to SubZeroArts! Okay, it sounds mercenary, but the truth is that it costs a lot of money to do something like this. And admittedly we could use some help to upgrade some of our gear and buy some more equipment and ultimately make Pillars of Light the best possible installation we can. We’ve set up a donations page on our website, and every donation we get will go towards making Pillars of Light into the most awesome installation it can be!

3) Get us in touch with more people! Okay, this is slightly different from spreading the word. While we love Ottawa and all of our friends there, we aren’t as well connected as we are here in Toronto, so we’d really appreciate if you could tell your Ottawa friends about us. Maybe you know somebody in Ottawa that can help us spread the word, or maybe you have a friend that writes for an Ottawa event blog that might be interested in what we’re doing. Maybe your sister lives in Ottawa and she can invite her karate club to drop by and see what we’re doing, or maybe your cousin’s archery team would be interested in an outing to see Pillars of Light! Get them in touch with us so we can keep them in the loop too!

So there you have it, three simple things that you can do! If you’re looking to be part of Pillars of Light, these are the best ways we can think of that you can help us out.

We had an interesting conversation last night with an old friend who’s been to a few of our installations in the past. She said that she liked coming to our events because we make installations so she can make art, and she liked being an artist for the length of her visit to our spaces. And her comment really resonates with us.

Because that’s what we do.

In all of our work, we want you to be just as much a part of the creation of the art as we are. We want you to direct the flow of what you see, we want you to create your own soundtrack to match your mood, and we want you to have an artistic experience that’s just as unique as you are.

That’s the idea at the heart of SubZeroArts, and that’s what we’ve tried to do with all of our work over the last few years. It’s what we want to do with Pillars of Light and we hope that you’ll want to make art with us when we’re ready to share the experience with you on September 21st.

Here at SubZeroArts we feel very strongly that all great things begin with a sketch on a napkin. And our latest installation, Pillars of Light is no different…

So to begin the countdown to our debut at Nuit Blanche Ottawa Gatineau, we thought we’d share that sketch on a napkin with you. It really feels like it’s happening now, doesn’t it?

We hope you’ll join us on Saturday, September 21st, 2013 as “Pillars of Light” makes its debut at Club SAW. Inspired by the beauty of outer space, “Pillars of Light” is a brand new participatory environment designed for NBOG where movement influences a series of illuminated columns within a three dimensional space, creating an active linkage between the audience and their environment through an evolving aural/optical spectacle that evokes nebulae, auroras and other interplanetary phenomena.

A lot of you have been asking us about about our new installation “Pillars of Light”, and we’re thrilled by all of your support! Over the next few weeks we’ll be sharing a whole bunch of stuff with you about getting everything ready, from preliminary sketches on napkins (because every installation begins with a sketch on a napkin…) through to behind the scenes shots of the two of us covered in rubber cement, right up to event day. We hope you’ll keep checking back here at subzeroarts.com so you can enjoy the journey to Ottawa with us!

SubZeroArts are very pleased to announce that our latest light/sound installation “Pillars of Light” will make its debut at Club SAW in Ottawa, Ontario on Saturday September 21st, 2013 as part of Nuit Blanche Ottawa Gatineau! Inspired by the beauty of outer space, “Pillars of Light” is a brand new participatory environment designed for NBOG where movement influences a series of illuminated columns within a three dimensional space, creating an active linkage between the audience and their environment through an evolving aural/optical spectacle that evokes nebulae, auroras and other interplanetary phenomena.

A recurring theme in our work has always been the stimulation of response in multiple modalities, and this year’s theme of SUPERNOVA really inspired us to move our work beyond the idea of a transient canvas into something more substantive, something with a greater physicality. With “Pillars of Light” we’ve designed a much more immersive space where audience members can experience a greater interaction between themselves and their environment as defined through generative light and sound. “Pillars of Light” is a logical extension and development of our past work, and we’re really looking forward to sharing it with all of our friends in Ottawa!